I sent this photo to Francis already but I thought you may like to take a look. It was taken in Tijuana, Mexico during my freshmen year at Berkeley. Francis wanted to eat authentic Mexican food and bought something from a food cart vendor. He kept enticing us with smacking and yum-yum noises as he ate.

I wrote about voting in a historic election eight years ago. Since then, California has become more blue, there are even more political fliers, and the only thing the left wing can seem to agree with the CAGOP on is what this state needs is even more propositions on the ballot.

Even though, back then, I strongly suspected I’d be casting this vote eight years later for Hillary Clinton, I didn’t realize how this day would hit me.

Marie got dressed in a pantsuit and we walked across the street to the community center to vote. Unlike me, she was homeschooled as a Christian conservative and voted for George W. Bush in 2004—her vote is more meaningful than mine.

Not this time! I called Dad yesterday and he said he’s with her—quite possibly his first vote for a Democratic candidate for President of the United States, definitely his first vote for a woman for that position.

…

I started blogging with the purpose to “write to create context for another to think” just after argument with my father about politics in 2004. He said:

“Nobody said democracy is perfect. It’s just the best thing we’ve got. Terry, maybe you’re right, and I’m wrong. But if you are, then have some faith in our system that the truths will come out. Have some faith that people can change. They just don’t have to change on your timetable.”

I honestly never thought Dad would change. But my father, with his vote with mom now, and a lifetime of past votes against, finally won an argument with “mom’s lawyer”: I have faith, and people can change.

No matter the outcome, this election reaffirms that faith in the conversation that is our democracy.

One Bad Hombre and one Nasty Woman (in a pantsuit) went to the polls and voted!
San Francisco, California, United States

So lucky she and I can split the workload of sifting through all those ballot propositions. Now that’s love. 😆😍

I first heard about it in 2007, when I started using Scrivener, but dismissed it because the requirement that a novel be fiction. I only just found about NaNo Rebels, which allows you to customize the “50,000 words” into nearly any other creative exercise, including non-fiction. So yesterday, this was born:

I don’t know if I can finish since it’s about a good sized blog article each and every day. We’ll see how it goes. So far it’s been a bit strange writing a book. For instance, I can’t use my WordPress shortcode macros lest I ruin the word count.

Here is family photo sans Aboji. I sent you this photo of us in our Seoul house in 1954. We had a large spacious house with tatami mats, heated floors and a large yard with a garden. Surrounding it was a cement wall for privacy. The back of the photo gives our names and ages. (The ages are Korean ages, meaning it is one year older than it is here in the western world).

Note to self: Add Sanjiv Rai to this tool and this one to list of people that we won’t have to hear anything about ever on November 9.

I seriously wonder how these reporters find these whack-a-loons, because they deserve whatever the Ig Nobel-equivalent there is for a Pulitzer. Who knew there is such a large market for liberal bed-wetting? 😀

Reminiscing with musical records from home on the family stereo set is the Dr. Alexis Taikyue Ree family, 228 Douglas Street. Dr. Ree came to Salt Lake City 12 years ago as an exchange professor at the University of Utah. During the Korean War he lost contact with his family, who finally joined him six years later. Left to right, they are Bernadette, 25; Teresa, 23; Joan, 15; and Dr. and Mrs. Ree.

Many requests come to the Ree family to describe and model their native costume which they wear only at such occasions. Both older girls are working toward a doctors degree at the University. Bernadette is a psychology major, Teresa is studying chemistry. An older brother, Francis, has his Ph.D. and is working in atomic research at the University of California in Berkeley.

Dr. Ree worked with Dr. Henry Eyring, now Dean of the Graduate School at the U., in 1939-41 at Princeton University. A native of Korea, Dr. Ree graduated from and then taught chemistry at Kyoto University in Korea (ED: in Japan). After World War II he was invited to return to Korea where at that time he became dean of Arts and Science at the University of Seoul (ED: Seoul National University).

Mrs. Ree, from one of the oldest Catholic family in Korea, reports interesting stories of martyrdom in her ancestry. In America as in Korea, she is strictly a housewfie and mother. All four of the children were born in Korea (ED: two were born in Japan). Joan is a freshman at Judge Memorial High School and has taken piano lessons since she was seven.

At the International Atomic Energy Conference in Vienna, Austria, in October, 1960, Dr. Ree received this significant medal form the Korean Government. The Korean National Academy Award, it was presented for his research in chemistry kinetics (the behavior of molecules and atoms) and for his research in plastics. At the time Korea sent a delegation to honor him.

Sometime in the future, I’ll most certainly need to go back and practice copying the other masters to make up for the fact that I’m doing things digitally, but for this pass, I simply tried my hand at the first artist mentioned: Eugène Delacroix.

Last week, no less than eleven people on my facebook shared this “confession” from Mike Rowe, with positive comments.

I can’t believe people think this deserves anything other that derision.

He’s more “Hollywood” than the people he denigrates. It takes real political courage to potentially alienate half your viewers, it takes none to opt-out with the tired “I won’t say, other than our politics sucks”-cop-out. It is pure pandering to use ill-thought-out platitudes like “voting is a right, not a (civic) duty” and “most people are too stupid or uninformed to vote” in a manner crafted so that **all** sides can retweet, repost, and feel self-righteous about it.

Pathetic.

If you take his philosophy to its natural and logical conclusion, we as a country should reinstitute literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise minorities and other such undemocratic measures. After all, what better way to ensure a enlightened democracy than to allow only those with the requisite amount of education and capital to make the “right” decision? Plato agrees, fuck this thing called democracy.

Ignore the cowards, if you have the right, even if you believe Hitlery will destroy America and needs to be stopped (heck, because you believe she will destroy America), go vote on November 8 this election. That’s an act of political courage and another test of this two hundred and thirty year experiment.